Game Of Thrones: 10 Characters The Show Wants You To Forget About

Ilyn Payne is best remembered as one of the names rattled off nightly from Arya’s kill list. And considering that Joffrey is dead, Cersei is currently occupied with a war, and The Hound kinda sorta turned good, Ilyn Payne is really one of the last people alive that Arya needs to murder.

So it’s strange that we haven’t seen a lot of him since he took Ned’s head off his body and set into motion Game Of Thrones' habit of killing off every character we’ve ever loved. In fact, in Episode 4 of Season 7, Arya herself said that most of the people on her list were dead, but perhaps she just forgot about Ilyn Payne like everyone else in Westeros?

Originally, the reason for Ilyn Payne’s disappearance was a behind the scenes one, as the actor who played him – Wilko Johnson – was diagnosed with cancer and Benioff and Weiss said they would never recast him. Since then however, Johnson has beaten his cancer and expressed interest in returning to the show, opening up all sorts of scenarios that may see the infamous Ilyn Payne losing his own head at the hands of Arya and Needle. Or, knowing this show, he'll probably return just to behead some more characters that we actually care about.

If neither of those things happen, however, we'd at the very least like to hear a mention of Payne just to confirm that he didn't disappear off the face of the map. With bad guys in Westeros dropping like flies, it would be nice to get another dose of vengeance in the form of Ilyn Payne's miserable frown cut right off his face.